No sausage?" he asked. Apparently my pork consumption habits were a matter of public record.

Walk really, really carefully. It's not complicated, but if you mess up, you'll die, so pay attention.

Did I just kill someone?" "You can't kill a dead person," Callum said. "Makes no sense.

No one hid their interest when I walked into the room. I'm not sure if it was the news about Boo or my general appearance. At home, people would have asked. People would have been crawling all over me for information. At Wexford, they seemed to extract what they wanted to know by covert staring.

These houses had been plunked down with an alarming randomness -- unevenly spaced, on crooked lines, like whoever had designed the place had said, "We'll just follow this cat, and wherever he sits down, we'll build something.

I envisioned huge piles of the Elf Hotel flying off the belt, taking down everybody in sight. I had seen pictures of that Elf Hotel - it had sharp candy-cane spires that could easily impale someone. If anyone was ever going to be killed by an Elf Hotel, it would be my parents.

A pause while my mother made high-pitched sisterly devotions of gratitude.